Four Tips To Get To Know Your Target Video Audience [Producer Tips #33]

In creating video content it is essential to know your video audience. Being aware of who your audience is will not only help you in deciding what kind of content to create, but also the tone the videos should have and whether what you are providing is relevent and engaging to your viewers.

In this week's Creator's Tip Kevin Nalty shares his tips on how to get to know your audience better.

Tip 1: Engage in the Comments

Always pay attention to the comments you receive from your viewers. These will give you a good head start to see if what you are providing is of interest to your audience.

Tip 2: Ask a lot of Questions.

Engagement is a great way to get to know your audience better. While comments are an initial view at what your audience likes, be sure to ask questions as necessary. You might be surprised by the comments you receive.

Tip 3: Create Videos That Are True to You.

While you do want to create videos that your audience will find interesting, you need to be sure you balance that with keeping your videos true to yourself. You don't want to get yourself in the rut of creating videos that don't also reflect who you are and what you want to get across.

Tip 4: Collaborate with Others to Exchange Audiences.

If you are trying to engage a new target audience or a group that you don't have a lot of viewers for, a great way is to find a creator who already engages that audience and approach them to exchange your audiences.

Tim: Hey guys, my name is Tim Schmoyer and welcome to another week of Creators Tip here on ReelSEO. I am hanging out with a guy named Kevin Nalty from www.YouTube.com/Nalts. Just read it right there if you’d like. He’s the author of the Japanese/Chinese version – I’m totally going to get railed for that cause there’s definitely a difference, but of Beyond Viral or the English version is probably the one you’ll go for.

Knowing our audience, how can we get to know who our audience is so we can engage with them better and more effectively and also what part do we get pick and choose our audiences based on the type of content we create?

Kevin: So it can be tricky to know your audience but you can get a flavor for it on the comments and what people respond. How they respond to certain videos. I have the trouble that I create goofy pranks and I create family videos and I think I’ve got kind of two different audiences that are sort of concentric circles on that front. So that can be a tricky thing. So I do ask a lot of questions to the audience and the viewers to get a sense of it, cause the best you can tell on the Analytics front is gender and location. You don’t really get into the behavioral aspects.

Tim: And age.

Kevin: Yeah and age. I’m skewing slightly older but verses like Annoying Orange which has a critical age. So it can be tricky. I think that it’s this balancing act too so yes you can pick your audience to the degree that you pick content for that specific audience, but there’s also this balancing act between creating videos that are true to you versus taking orders from the viewers. I’ve seen a lot of creators fatigue because they’re trying to predict what their audience wants and give them exactly that and you get kind of caught in a little bit of a rut there, so it is important to know your audience, but it’s also important to be true to your own style.

Tim: Yeah, okay, so ask questions, be yourself. And do stuff that is representative of you. Anything else that has been helpful for you?

Kevin: I think by collaborating too you can sort of exchange audiences. So that’s another way. If for example you’re trying to find people that are younger or trying to find people that are edgier try to partner with a creator that is already talking to that audience who can share.

Tim: Cool. And maybe we should have talked about this at the front end of this conversation, but what’s the value of knowing your audience in the first place? Why is that important?

Kevin: Oh man, it’s so important because you could be getting it wrong and knowing the tonality to use, knowing what content is more relevant. And so a perfect example is my kids, as they were younger I could exploit them as props and now they’re getting into an older age where they are more resembling the target audience of YouTube. That helps a lot cause I know what they find funny and don’t. And it amazes me.

Tim: You’re not the target audience?

Kevin: No, clearly I’m not. But they’re getting into that target audience so I can sort of see what sticks and what doesn’t. And so there’s something real powerful as a marketer I like to be able to watch the people that we’re targeting. See them, interact with them, and absent that you’re kind of shooting in the dark.

Tim: Cool. If this was helpful for you guys, I’d love to hear from you. Comment below and let us know what you guys have found that was really valuable for getting to know your audience. How has it helped you and how are you creating your videos and is there a part where, like an element of this where you get to pick who your audience is based on the content you create. We’d love to hear from you guys. Comment below.

Kevin: Oh can I ask them below to also comment on your gender, your sexual preference, as well as your horoscope sign. We’d like to know that.

Tim: And credit card numbers, social security numbers. All that stuff.

Kevin: Just email that directly to Tim. That’s fine.

Tim: Yeah, I’ll take care of that stuff. So feel free to subscribe. If this is your first time, we do these every week for you guys here at ReelSEO and we just love doing these and helping you guys who are creating content to know how to do that the best here on the web and we will see you guys again next week for another Creators Tip Video. Bye.